The battle to retake Mali's north from the al-Qaida-linked groups controlling it began in earnest Saturday, after hundreds of French forces deployed to the country and began aerial bombardments to drive back the Islamic extremists from a town seized earlier this week.

The French have been getting tough in Africa for decades. It’s part of their colonial legacy and happen mostly in their old colonies to which they have banking and trade interests. Remember the French interventions in Ivory Coast, Chad, Djibouti and libya, not to mention Algeria, which is a different kind of animal. I think they’ve also rescued hostages in Somalia.

What makes this Mali intervention interesting to me is that it mirrors the fight against Al-Shabaab in Somalia on the other side of the continent, except that the French are intervening directly instead of supporting proxies. Things were crumbling pretty badly.

8
posted on 01/12/2013 12:28:32 PM PST
by Owl558
("Those who remember George Satayana are doomed to repeat him")

I wonder what will be the direct consequences of whatever idiotic decision he makes with regards to Syria. Either way, it’ll be idiotic, and you’ll watch it on TV or the Internet. I’ll hear the explosions’ vibrations through the ground.

However, Mali is quite different from Afghanistan in geography. Afghanistan is a country made up of small cities/towns and homesteads in mountain valleys and at a few crossroads. Without aircraft, fighting the jihadists is a long slugfest.

However, in Mali, as in the Saharan fight between Morocco and the leftist Polisario, there were few major bases involved and attacks were made by truck convoys (Polisario). When they were caught in the open by the Moroccan (and/or French Air Force), they were decimated, and a hundreds of miles long bern wall stopped them from raiding Moroccan army camps and cities.

Mali looks like the place where airpower, by the French, will be the weapon with which to cripple AQIM armed convoys, and then hit their supply depots, communications and control centers, and to cut them off from reinforcements from other towns/bases. (Already happening according to new reports).

The only thing missing is, besides what one poster suggested, i.e. a Spectre gunship(s) is napalm. It is the best weapon for taking out a truck convoy which usually travels single-file across the desert. You can run but you can’t hide or even outrun a jet filled with the good stuff.

Helicopter gunships are good if you have enough, with rockets and heavy machineguns. Sending in a handful to a battle is not combat efficiency. If you are going to destroy the enemy in the field, you make sure that you have enough choppers and planes to do it right the first time.

You hit them “high and low”, high being bombers and mid-altitude strafing by jets and light bombers, while “low” means helicopters and/or an equivalent of the A10 Warthog.

Spectres are both mid-level and high level fighting machines, depending on whether you are using miniguns or the 105MM cannons.

I hope the French don’t have “rules of engagement” for desert fighting. You fight to win, not gain a draw.

It’s not just Obama’s foreign policy blunders. Perhaps Mali is reaping a little of what the Clinton era sowed in Africa as well :

DECEMBER 1999 : (USAID TERMINATES IARA PROJECT AGREEMENTS IN MALI-— see IARA, COLUMBIA MO CELL, SILJANDER, MALI, IRAQ, TERROR CHARITIES) IARA, Hamed and Bagegni had previously entered into a series of agreements with USAID for relief projects in Mali, Africa. When USAID terminated those agreements in December 1999, the amount of money involved totaled approximately $2 million. IARA had allegedly failed to fully fund the matching contributions required to receive USAID funds. After the termination of these agreements, the indictment alleges, IARA, Hamed and Bagegni, without authorization, retained approximately $84,922 of USAID money and failed to return the funds to USAID as called for by the agreements.
———Islamic Charity Charged with Terrorist Financing; Former U.S. Congressman Indicted for Money Laundering, January 16, 2008 http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2008/January/08_nsd_029.html
6 posted on Wednesday, June 30, 2010 4:14:53 AM by Cindy | To 4

A London accountant has described how Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma’bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world.Siddiqui, who used to live in the Gulf until he moved to London, has told how on his vists to Timbuktu the ‘father’ of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert.
Despite Siddiqui’s claim that the three visits had no ulterior motive, the qualifications of the men who accompanied Khan, including his chief scientific adviser, the head of security at the top secret Khan Research Laboratories near Islamabad and a former surgeon general of the Pakistan army, would suggest otherwise.———————— “Khan’s visit to Timbuktu was to prospect for uranium - dissident,” London |By Shyam Bhatia, Correspondent | 19-02-2004
Gulf News, Feb 19, 2004http://article.wn.com/link/WNAT039982C35252AFDAE2D6E88A1A1896F5?source=templategenerator&template=nigerpost/mainsearch.txt

Pakistani dissidents for their part have told how the real reason for Khan's visit Timbuktu was to prospect for uranium. Landlocked Mali lies adjacent to uranium-rich Niger, from where the French government obtains all the uranium it needs for its nuclear programme, and Mali also has untapped resources of the same mineral. The [Pakistani] dissidents say Khan's subsequent purchase of the newly named Hendrina Khan Hotel was just a cover to his real interest in the precious uranium needed for nuclear bombs. ---------------- "Khan's visit to Timbuktu was to prospect for uranium - dissident," London |By Shyam Bhatia, Correspondent | 19-02-2004 Gulf News, Feb 19, 2004 http://article.wn.com/link/WNAT039982C35252AFDAE2D6E88A1A1896F5?source=templategenerator&template=nigerpost/mainsearch.txt

Pakistani dissidents for their part have told how the real reason for Khan's visit Timbuktu was to prospect for uranium. Landlocked Mali lies adjacent to uranium-rich Niger, from where the French government obtains all the uranium it needs for its nuclear programme, and Mali also has untapped resources of the same mineral. The [Pakistani] dissidents say Khan's subsequent purchase of the newly named Hendrina Khan Hotel was just a cover to his real interest in the precious uranium needed for nuclear bombs. ---------------- "Khan's visit to Timbuktu was to prospect for uranium - dissident," London |By Shyam Bhatia, Correspondent | 19-02-2004 Gulf News, Feb 19, 2004 http://article.wn.com/link/WNAT039982C35252AFDAE2D6E88A1A1896F5?source=templategenerator&template=nigerpost/mainsearch.txt

I can see why the libs really don't want Benghazi and Stevens and Mali in the news after telling us there was no way Iraq could have sought uranium in Niger :

A leading Pakistani newspaper reported today that Khan had a vast array of real estate holdings, including a hotel in Timbuktu, Mali. The News daily reported that Khan also used a military transport aircraft to ship carved wooden furniture to the hotel, which he named after his Dutch wife, Hendrina. Because the plane couldnt land in Mali, it touched down in Tripoli, Libya, and the furniture was taken the rest of the way by road, the News said. Also along for the ride was Farooq, an expert on centrifuges  a key piece of equipment required to enrich uranium for use in weapons.-----------Scientists investigated over selling nuclear secrets, Ireland On-Line, 01/02/2004 - 15:23:37 http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=93330376&p=9333yx8z

The controversial father of Pakistans nuclear program was in Niamey (Niger) on the very same days in which Saddams emissaries were present. ...
A recent intelligence lead takes us back to Niger, where Khan was a welcomed guest of the government and where his intermediaries continue to do business: the very same intermediaries who ,in 1999 made a fool of the French Secret Services charged with monitoring  through the multinational Cogema  the uranium mines from which some years before these intermediaries were able to illegally export 1,200 tons of yellow cake (yellow uranium oxide from which gas is extracted to be applied in centrifuges in order to be enriched) to Libya.
The very same Khan  according to official International Atomic Energy Agency data  bought a part of the 450 tons of (uranium) stored in Libya in exchange for arms and petrodollars to finance Islamabads nuclear program. ...-—— “Uranium from Niger for the Islamic Atom Bomb,” By Gian Marco Chiocci , il Giornale de Italia , Washington, November 30, 2005 (Translation by Parnasokan .Edited by poster.) ; Original text-in Italian-is at the link: http://www.ilgiornale.it/a.pic1?ID=46594

Al Qaeda’s African strategy has always been part of a broader geopolitical strategy supported by their state sponsors in the Middle East and elsewhere (including Iran), geared towards gaining a land foothold for control of the key naval shipping routes in the region. Reviewing the Nazi strategy in North Africa and the Soviet strategy during the Algerian independence movement is instructive for interpreting the strategic significance of the recent agitations in Egypt, Libya, Mali, etc.

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